Michael Maria Penttilä

Michael Maria Penttilä (born Jukka Torsten Lindholm, born July 1965) is a Finnish serial killer. According to Finnish crime magazine Alibi, he is the only Finn that fits FBI's description of a serial killer.

Adolescent crimes
In November 1981, Penttilä, then known as Jukka Lindholm, kidnapped a 15-year-old girl and forced her into a basement, where he beat her, choked her with scarves and threatened to rape her. He wore black leather gloves during the attack. The girl managed to escape. Lindholm was sentenced to fines and a suspended sentence, but other thefts and attacks led to a prison sentence in 1984. He was released in 1985.

First murders
Lindholm killed his mother, 48-year-old barmaid Laina Lahja Orvokki Lindholm in their apartment in Oulu on 26 August 1985. Both Lindholm and his mother's male friend were suspected of the murder, but it went unsolved until Lindholm later confessed.

The next murder Lindholm committed was on 26 July 1986. He met two 12-year-old girls downtown and persuaded them to "come to his apartment so he could lend them a few marks for alcohol". Within his residence in Oulu, he locked one of the girls in the bathroom. The other girl, Titta Marjaana Kotaniemi, was knocked down on the floor and was strangled to death. After some time, Lindholm released the other girl from the bathroom and sexually assaulted her. The girl escaped his grasp and ran from the apartment to the stairway, while Lindholm fled to the nearby forest where the police soon caught him. He was drunk, measuring 1.75 on the BAC scale.

In connection with the murder of Kotaniemi, Lindholm confessed to the police that he was mistreated by his mother. According to his statement, he had worn the blue leather gloves and the red-colored scarf of his mother before doing so. He was angered by the fact that his mother had not been able to release him from the youth facility and that she had been dating a new man, preferring to live with him rather than his father. Later, in the Oulu court, he recanted his confession and claimed he had been using multiple psychoactive drugs at once.

The Oulu District Court issued its judgment on 17 March 1987. The court ruled that Lindholm had been guilty of two charges of manslaughter as well as other crimes, condemning him to 9 years and 7 months imprisonment. However, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court held the case that Laina Lindholm's death was not intentional and instead an assault or negligent homicide, and reduced the sentence to 7 years imprisonment.

Third murder
Lindholm was granted parole in May 1992. On 31 May 1993, he strangled a 42-year-old woman with a cloth belt in her Kempele apartment. Lindholm at first objected sharply to the accusation, claiming that somebody had set him up. On 23 June 1993, he escaped from the Oulu County Police Station with a man.

The Oulu District Court considered Lindholm to be completely sane and sentenced him to 9.5 years imprisonment on 13 December 1993.

Following the judgment of the District Court, Lindholm contacted the investigators. He admitted to having killed the woman, but it was an accident. According to him, he had proposed explicit sex and explained that he was playing around the neck before realizing that the woman had died due to choking. Lindholm had wandered off to his mother's grave after the murder, staying there for a few hours. The Appellate Court subsequently changed the sentence to 10.5 years, sending Lindholm to a special institution.

According to psychiatric reports, Lindholm admired the primordial, violent manhood of his teenage years – despite starting to wear dresses and women's underwear while in prison. The head of the Hämeenlinna Center forbade this, and Lindholm subsequently complained to the Parliament's ombudsman.

Later legal troubles
Lindholm was released on parole in November 2008. Before his release, he was evaluated, and it was concluded that he was not yet ready for civilian life.

In prison, he married Hannele Pentholm, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for her husband's murder. They were married for a couple of years. At the time he renamed himself to Michael Maria Pentholm.

He invited a woman to his house in May 2009 where he tried to strangle the woman with both hands from behind.

In August 2009, Pentholm bought an Oulu apartment in Toppila via a professional jury magazine announcement. He began to choke a woman who was setting up a massage table in the apartment's living room.

On 11 June 2010, the Oulu District Court sentenced Pentholm to six years imprisonment for three attempted manslaughters and numerous assaults. Authorities ordered Pentholm to serve his whole sentence because, according to a psychological study, he was regarded as a very dangerous offender. In April 2011, the Rovaniemi Appellate Court considered Pentholm to have committed only three aggravated assaults, lowering the sentence to 4 years and 5 months. At the same time, the Appellate Court ruled that the prerequisites for ordering Pentholm to serve his entire sentence in jail did not exist.

On 2 March 2012, the Oulu District Court condemned Pentholm to 4 years and 4 months for aggravated rape, gross ill-treatment and false imprisonment. The rape and false imprisonment had taken place on 21–22 August 2009 at a hotel in Oulu, and the assault at a business in the period from 1–31 May 2009 in Pentholm's Oulu apartment in Myllyoja. The authorities ordered Pentholm to execute his full sentence in jail.

On Tuesday, 13 October 2015, the now renamed Michael Penttilä escaped from Laukaa's open prison during a prisoner shopping trip, but was caught the following day. He was granted parole in the spring of 2016. Penttilä's jail sentence was prolonged due to the absences and the entire term of his sentence was changed to imprisonment in a closed prison.

Penttilä was released in 2016 on Christmas. In April 2017, the police ordered for Penttilä to be arrested again for alleged aggravated crime and the preparation of a criminal offense, but the Helsinki District Court released him during the investigation. In May 2017, the Helsinki Appellate Court annulled the decision and Penttilä was rearrested. On 7 July 2017, the Helsinki District Court dismissed the prosecution of an aggravated criminal offense or a health offense and ordered Penttilä to be released. In May 2018, the Appellate Court changed the decision and Penttilä was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months imprisonment, and to pay the victim compensation of 4,000 euros.

On 13 April 2018, Penttilä killed a sex worker in a Helsinki apartment. The victim was found on 4 May and Penttilä was arrested two days later in Helsinki, suspected of murder. On 17 May 2018, the police announced that Penttilä had admitted during interrogations that he had committed a homicide. In July, the Helsinki District Court sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder. During the murder he had used several tools such as leather belts, tights, or his bare hands. Penttilä later announced that he would appeal the court's decision. Helsinki Appellate Court upheld the sentence, except that it did not consider the offence premeditated.